To Prevent the Nightmares
by Lover of Angelus
Summary: I tried so hard to hide them. But Hunters kept coming.
1. Preventing Nightmares

**Title **: To Prevent the Nightmares

**Disclaimer **: Me no own, You no sue.

**Warning** : None

**Note **: Futuristic. May have a second chapter, no promises.

-z-

You sometimes like to think that you could've prevented it. Prevent the Nightmares that they've now become.

That's when Bobby looks at you and laughs, shakes his bowed head and chuckles without mirth because he knows that you would never have had a chance.

"Only a Winchester can handle another Winchester," he says. You had said those words once, said them to your daughter when she dreamed of having one of those boys as her own.

"You should've seen him, Ellen," Bobby stares at the floor of the shelter you two share with five other survivors.

Everyone listens when Bobby starts talking about the Winchesters.

"You should've seen Dean those few days that Sam was dead. You should've seen how broken he was, how-," he searches for the right word, "how _terrifying _that boy was.

"He was ready to snap, I could feel it every time I walked into the room. Just a ticking bomb waiting for the right button to be pushed. He was an animal, there was no seperating him from Sam. Everytime I tried to convince him it was time to bury his brother, he just stared at me with these-these dead eyes and tell me no, not yet."

"How different was the world back then?" asks a little girl, she was 3 years old and had never known a world without fire in the sky.

"It was beautiful," you say after a while, the sad smile on her lips something you regret.

"Why did they take that away?" asks Holly, the little girl's mother.

Bobby shares a look with you.

"Because no one knew how to leave well enough alone," he said. "Hunters all around the country thought that they could be the one, they could be the one to take down the Winchesters. They all thought they were such hot shit."

A crash and screaming outside catches everyone's attention. They listen, but it's nothing they haven't heard before.

"I remember the night they came to me. Dean was pacing back and forth, cussing and itching for some peace of mind, oh how he just wanted to be left alone. Both of them. Sam looked at me, I could see the beginnings of evil, but I also saw hope, hope that I could offer him something to cling to."

-

_"Keep them away from us," Sam was saying. "I don't know how much longer I can hold out. It's too much for us. We're so close to the edge, Bobby I can feel it."_

_"I don't know what I can do," Bobby shook his head. "None of them listen."_

_"Then we'll just start killing," Dean sat down on the couch with a heavy thump and put his head in his hands, raking his fingers across his scalp. "Think they'd get it then?!"_

_"Dean," Bobby almost whispered._

_"I can hear him," Sam's voice was breaking. "There was someone else in on the yellow-eyed demon's plans. I can hear them whispering to me in my dreams, telling me to kill, kill, kill. At least that way Dean and I can stay safe."_

-

"What can you say to something like that?" Bobby continued. "What could I say to these two to help them? I tried so hard to hide them. But Hunters kept coming."

You want to cry, cry for the world that once was, for the world that now is, and for the world that could've been.

But you can't.

You gave up on crying a long time ago.

-z-


	2. How It Started

**Title **: How It Started

**Disclaimer **: Me no own, You no sue. The only thing I own is the timeline for this story.

**Warning** : None

**Note **: Here's the second chapter I didn't think I would post. Takes place before the previous chapter.

-z-

"Too dangerous," she hears other Hunters whisper over the rim of their drinks, glancing at each other and then at the Winchester brothers as they walk by, plotting eyes trailing the brothers' journey through the bar.

She wonders if any of them will actually stand up to the brothers, challenge their right to be Hunters, to even be alive.

Sam's secret is going around in soft whispers and quick intakes of breath. The danger of the younger Winchester made known.

"Someone's bound to do something stupid; real soon," Ash tells Ellen one night. "Someone's gonna get it in their head that since they're so young, they're not so deadly, and then they're gonna get themselves killed."

"Who's gonna get killed?" Ellen asks absentmindedly. "The Winchesters or the Someone?"

Ash smiles, glances at Ellen, "The Someone. No doubt about it."

"What makes you think the Winchesters'll kill anyone?" Ellen's voice is soft.

Maybe not at first," Ash shrugs his shoulder, his nonchalance about the matter frightening Ellen. "But who knows, if those Hunters keep coming one right after the other, the brothers might snap. They'll break and, one day, the barrels will be aimed just a little too high."

Ellen nods; she knows that those boys are wound tight.

When the news came around that Stiggy, a Hunter who had gone after the brothers, was still missing after a week, it was really no surprise to Ellen.

"Told you," Ash just shakes his head.

-z-


End file.
